Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  As Navidson and Reston head out into the labyrinth, they occasionally come upon pieces of neon marker and shreds of various types of fishing line. Not even multi-strand steel line seems immune to the diminishing effects of that place.

  "It looks like its impossible to leave a lasting trace here," Navidson observes.

  "The woman you never want to meet," quips Reston, always managing to keep his wheelchair a little ahead of Navidson.

  Soon, however, Reston begins to suffer from nausea, and even vomits. Navidson asks him if he is sick. Reston shakes his head.

  "No, it's more ... shit, I haven't felt this way since I went fishing for marlin."

  Navidson speculates Reston's sea sickness or his "mal de mer," as he calls it, may have something to do with the changing nature of the house: "Everything here is constantly shifting. It took Holloway, Jed, and Wax almost four days to reach the bottom of the staircase, and yet we made it down in five minutes. The thing collapsed like an accordion." Then looking over at his friend: "You realize if it expands again, you're in deep shit."

  "Considering our supplies," Reston shoots back. "I'd say we'd both be in deep shit."

  As was already mentioned in Chapter III, some critics believe the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it. Dr. Haugeland asserts that the extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data.[80] Ruby Dahl, in her stupendous study of space, calls the house on Ash Tree Lane "a solipsistic heightener," arguing that "the house, the halls, and the rooms all become the self—collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always in perfect relation to the mental state of the individual."[81]

  If one accepts Dahl's reading, then it follows that Holloway's creature comes from Holloway's mind not the house; the tiny room Wax finds himself trapped within reflects his own state of exhaustion and despair; and Navidson's rapid descent reflects his own knowledge that the Spiral Staircase is not bottomless. As Dr. Haugeland observes:

  The epistemology of the house remains entirely commensurate with its size. After all, one always approaches the unknown with greater caution the first time around. Thus it appears far more expansive than it literally is. Knowledge of the terrain on a second visit dramatically contracts this sense of distance.

  Who has never gone for a walk through some unfamiliar park and felt that it was huge, only to return a second time to discover that the park is in fact much smaller than initially perceived?

  When revisiting places we once frequented as children, it is not unusual to observe how much smaller everything seems. This experience has too often been attributed to the physical differences between a child and an adult. In fact it has more to do with epistemological dimensions than with bodily dimensions: knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.

  (Admittedly there is the matter where boredom, due to repetition, stretches time and space. I will deal specifically with this problem in a later chapter entitled "Ennui."[82])

  When Holloway's team traveled down the stairway, they had no idea if they would find a bottom. Navidson, however, knows the stairs are finite and therefore has far less anxiety about the descent.

  204Missing. — Ed.

  Unlike the real world, Navidson's journey into the house is not just figuratively but literally shortened.204

  This theme of structures altered by perception is not uniquely observed in The Navidson Record. Almost thirty years ago, Giinter Nitschke described what he termed "experienced or concrete space":

  It has a centre which is perceiving man, and it therefore has an excellent system of directions which changes with the movements of the human body; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to man.. ,[83]

  Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that "architecture comes into being only when experienced."[84]

  Norberg-Schulz asserts: "Architectural space certainly exists independently of the casual perceiver, and has centres and directions of its own." Focusing on the constructions of any civilization, whether ancient or modem, it is hard to disagree with him. It is only when focusing on Navidson's house that these assertions begin to blur.

  Can Navidson's house exist without the experience of itself?

  Is it possible to think of that place as "unshaped" by human perceptions?

  Especially since everyone entering there finds a vision almost completely—though pointedly not completely—different from anyone else's?

  Even Michael Leonard, who had never heard of Navidson's house, professed a belief in the "psychological dimensions of space." Leonard claimed people create a "sensation of space" where the final result "in the perceptual process is a single sensation—a 'feeling' about that particular place . . ,"[85]

  In his book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch suggested emotional cognition of all environment was rooted in history, or at least personal history:

  [Environmental image, a generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world] is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action.[86]

  [Italics added for emphasis]

  Or as Jean Piaget insisted: "It is quite obvious that the perception of space involves a gradual construction and certainly does not exist ready-made at the outset of mental development."[87] Like Leonard's attention to sensation and Piaget's emphasis on constructed perception, Lynch's emphasis on the importance of the past allows him to introduce a certain degree of subjectivity to the question of space and more precisely architecture.

  Where Navidson's house is concerned, subjectivity seems more a matter of degree. The Infinite Corridor, the Anteroom, the Great Hall, and the Spiral Staircase, exist for all, though their respective size and even layout sometimes changes. Other areas of that place, however, never seem to replicate the same pattern twice, or so the film repeatedly demonstrates.

  No doubt speculation will continue for a long time over what force alters and orders the dimensions of that place. But even if the shifts turn out to be some kind of absurd interactive Rorschach test resulting from some peculiar and as yet undiscovered law of physics, Reston's nausea still reflects how the often disturbing disorientation experienced within that place, whether acting directly upon the inner ear or the inner labyrinth of the psyche, can have physiological consequences.[88]

  different set of procedures and routines carried out by these white draped ministers of medicine, Dr.Ogelmeyer friends, who by their very absence forced me to wonder what would happen if I were really unhealthy, as unhealthy as I am now poor, how much longer would I have to wait, how much more cramped and sour would this room be, and if I wanted to leave would I? Could I? Perhaps I wouldn't even know how to leave. Incarcerated forever within the corridors of some awful facility. 5051. Protective custody. Or just as terrifying: no 5051, no protective custody. Left to wander alone the equally ferocious and infernal corridors of indigence.

  To put it politely: no fucking way.

  I know what it means to go mad.

  I'll die before I go there.

  But first I have to find out if that's where I'm really heading.

  I've got to stop blinking in the face of my fear.

  I must hear what I scream.

  I must remember what I dream.

  I pick up the sedatives, these Zs without Z, and one by one crush them between my fingers, letting the dust fall to the floor. Next I locate all the alcohol I have buried around my studio and pour it down the sink. Then I root out every seed and bud of pot and flush it down the toilet along with the numbers of all suppliers. I eventually find a few tabs of old acid as well as some Ecstasy hidden in a bag of rice. These I also toss.

  The consumption of MDMA, aka Ecstasy, aka E, aka X, has been known to bring on epilepsy especially whe
n taken in large quantities. Eight months ago, I ingested more than my fair share, mostly White Angels, though I also went ahead and invited to the party a slew of Canaries, Stickmen, Snowballs, Hurricanes, Hallways, Butterflies, Tasmanian Devils and Mitsubishis, which was a month long party, all of it pretty much preceding Thanksgiving, and a different story altogether.

  There are so many stories . . .

  Perhaps I'll be lucky and discover this awful dread that gnaws on me day and night is nothing more than the shock wave caused by too many crude chemicals rioting in my skull for too long. Perhaps by cleaning out my system I'll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace.

  Then again perhaps in finding my clearing I'll only make myself an easier prey for the real terror that tracks me, waiting beyond the perimeter, past the tall grass, the brush, that stand of trees, cloaked in shadow and rot, but with enough presence to resurrect within me a whole set of ancient reflexes, ordering a non-existent protrusion at the base of my spine to twitch, my pupils already dilating, adrenaline flowing, even as instinct commands me to run.

  But by then it will already be too late. The distance far too great to cover. As if there ever really was a place to hide.

  At least I'll have a gun.

  I'll buy a gun.

  Then I'll crouch and I will wait.

  Outside shots are fired. Lots. In fact one sounds like an artillery cannon going off. Suddenly the city's at war and I'm

  confused. When I go to my window a spray of light sets me straight, though the revelation is not without irony.

  Somehow the date escaped me.

  It's July 4th.

  This country's birthday. Wow.

  Which I realize means I forgot my own birthday. A day that came and passed, it turns out, in of all places Hailey's arms. How about that, I can remember the beginnings of a nation that doesn't give a flying fuck about me, would possibly even strangle me if given half the chance, but I can't remember my own beginnings—and I'm probably the only one alive willing to at least attempt on my behalf that tricky flying fuck maneuver.

  Which might be worth some sort of smile, if I hadn't already come to realize that irony is a Maginot Line drawn by the already condemned—which oddly enough still does make me smile.

  Fortunately Reston's nausea does not last long, and he and Navidson can spend the rest of the day pushing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

  Initially, they follow the scant remains of the first team and then continue on by following their instincts. Based on the fact that there was very little evidence of the first team's descent remaining on the stairs, Navidson determines that the neon markers and fishing line last at most six days before they are entirely consumed by the house.

  When they finally make camp, both men are disheartened and exhausted. Nevertheless, each agrees to alternately serve as watch. Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes—clearly a painful process—before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing. Reston spends his time tinkering with his chair and the mount on the Arriflex.

  Except for their own restlessness, neither one hears anything during the night.

  Toward the end of their second day inside (making this the ninth day since Holloway's team set out into the house), both men seem uncertain whether to continue or return.

  It is only as they are making camp for the second night that Navidson hears something. A voice, maybe a cry, but so fleeting were it not for Reston's confirmation, it probably would have been shrugged off as just a high note of the imagination.

  Leaving most of their equipment behind, the two men head out in pursuit of the sound. For forty minutes they hear nothing and are about to give up when their ears are again rewarded with another distant cry. Based on the rapidly changing video time stamp, we can see another three hours passes as they weave in and out of more rooms and corridors, often moving very quickly, though never failing to mark their course with neon arrows and ample amounts of fishing line.

  At one point, Navidson manages to get Tom on the radio, only to leam that there is something the matter with Karen. Unfortunately, the signal decays before he can get more details. Finally, Reston stops his wheelchair and jabs a finger at a wall. On Hi 8, we witness his gruff assertion: "How we get through it, I don't have a clue. But that crying's coming from the other side."

  Searching out more hallways, more turns, Navidson eventually leads the way down a narrow corridor ending with a door. Navidson and Reston open it only to discover another corridor ending with another door. Slowly they make their way through a gauntlet of what must be close to fifty doors (it is impossible to calculate the exact number due to the jump cuts), until Navidson discovers for the first and only time a door without a door knob. Even stranger, as he tries to push the door open, he discovers it is locked. Reston's expression communicates nothing but incredulity.[89]

  See also Anne Balifs article in which she quotes Dr. F. Minkowska's comments on De Van Gogh el Seurat aux dessins d'enfants, illustrated catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musee Pedagogique (Paris) 1949.

  213"l recall that Frangoise Minkowska organized an unusually moving exhibition of drawings by Polish and Jewish children who had suffered the cruelties of the German occupation during the last war. One child, who had been hidden in a closet every time there was an alert, continued to draw narrow, cold, closed houses long after those evil times were over. These are what Mme. Minkowska calls 'motionless' houses, houses that have become motionless in their rigidity. ' This rigidity and motionlessness are present in the smoke as well as in the window curtains. The surrounding trees are quite straight and give the impression of standing guard over the house.' . . .

  "Often a simple detail suffices for Mme. Minkowska, a distinguished psychologist, to recognize the way the house functions. In one house, drawn by an eight-year-old child, she notes that there is 'a knob on the door; people go in the house, they live there.' It is not merely a constructed house, it is also a house that is 'lived-in.' Quite obviously the door-knob has a functional significance. This is the kinesthetic sign, so frequently forgotten in the drawings of 'tense' children.

  "Naturally too, the door-knob could hardly be drawn in scale with the house, its function taking precedence over any question of size. For it expresses the function of opening, and only a logical mind could object that it is used to close as well as to open the door. In the domain of values, on the other hand, a key closes more often than it opens, whereas the door-knob opens more often than it closes." As translated by Maria Jolas in Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 72-73. — Ed.

  As Navidson pulls away to re-examine the obstacle, he hears a whimper coming from the other side. Taking two steps back, he throws his shoulder into the door. It bends but does not give way. He tries again and again, each hit straining the bolt and hinges, until the fourth hit, at last, tears the hinges free, pops whatever bolt held it in place, and sends the door cracking to the floor.

  Reston keeps the chair mounted Arriflex trained on Navidson and while the focus is slightly soft, as the door breaks loose, the frame gracefully accepts Jed's ashen features as he faces what he has come to believe is his final moment.

  This whole sequence amounts to a pretty ratty collection of cuts alternating between Jed's Hi 8 and an equally poor view from the 16mm camera and Navidson and Reston's Hi 8s. Nevertheless what matters most here is adequately captured: the alchemy of social contact as Jed's rasp of terror almost instantly transforms itself into laughter and sobs of relief. In a scattering of seconds, a thirty-three year old man from Vineland, New Jersey, who loves to drink Seattle coffee and listen to Lyle Lovett with his fiancee, learns his sentence has been remitted.

  He will live.

  As diligent as any close analysis of the Zapruder film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here[90] reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced hi
s upper lip, blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205). Ample information perhaps to track the trajectories of individual skull bits and blood droplets, determine destinations, even origins, but not nearly enough information to actually ever reassemble the shatter. Here then—

  the after

  math

  of meaning.

  A life

  time

  finished between

  the space of

  two

  frames.

  The dark line where

  seeing

  persists in

  something that was never there

  To[91] begin with

  Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: "Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact. Watch how the frame does not, cannot anticipate the action. Jed's in the lower left hand corner of the frame! Nothing's predetermined or foreseen. It's all painfully present which is why it's so painfully real."2'6